TM and the Honeymoon Album

Once years ago I heard  that a lecture on transcendental meditation was to be given at a local community center.

Intrigued and eager to learn about the benefits of meditation I went,  and when the lecture ended I struck up a conversation with the young woman sitting next to me.   Her name was Joan, we were about the same age, and like me she was recently married.

Happily we exchanged phone numbers and a few days later Joan called and invited me and Danny to dinner.

On the appointed evening we arrived armed with the requisite bottle of wine,  met her charming husband Arnie,  and we were soon gayly chatting away when Joan popped out of the kitchen to say dinner would be ready in 15 or 20 minutes.

While we were waiting,  she suggested that Arnie show us the pictures they’d taken on their honeymoon.   And so he brought out a large photo album,  and began proudly turning the pages.

I don’t remember where they had honeymooned,  or what Joan served us for dinner that night,  or if we ever saw them again.  But I’ll never forget that photo album with dozens and dozens of pictures of Joan and Arnie in various poses –  all smiles,  and both of them completely in the nude.

(BTW I never could get into transcendental meditation either.)

– Dana Susan Lehrman

...never, never, never step on laughter.
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We felt a bit deceived—after all, we only agreed to take him because she had begged—but he had clearly had a traumatic adolescence and changed since his owner had died.  We still took him in, the damaged goods, and named him “Jack”.
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Comedy, for me, is reified in the Animal Crackers scene when madcap Captain Spaulding (Groucho Marx) steps away from staid Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont) and  Mrs. Whitehead (Margaret Irving) saying: “Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”  You know, recently I’ve favored cremation over burial, but burial’s preferable if I can have Groucho’s line carved on my tombstone.

And speaking of death, which is de rigueur at the beginning of any contemporary media, how about these lines from James Tate’s fabulous poem, “On the Subject of Doctors.”

“Sorry, Mr. Rodriquez, that’s it,

no hope.  You might as well

hand over your wallet.”

Sure, I’m a Marxist, and a disciple of P G Wodehouse, and until I discovered Thelonius Monk (I don’t mean on a street, I mean his recordings), Bugs Bunny was my deity. Now, Monk’s God, Bugs’ the Son, and Eugene the Magical Jeep is The Holy Spirit.)  I love comedy because its oblique and non sequitur is its nature (even if that doesn’t make sense, it ‘s fun to say, and that’s enough for comedy).

I’m increasingly convinced that language is a joke, especially as I listen to evangelists, politicians, scientists, and athletes bloviate. (cf. philosopher, Harry Frankfurter’s essential book, On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005).  If humans would admit most language is jabber we could choir like birds, to similar effect and greater delight.  Think about it, do birds sing because they can fly, or fly because they sing?

And what about Western Grebes?

I have only one tenant, which I discovered, if I remember correctly, on the New Year 1972 cover of Parade Magazine: “Avoid zealots.  They are generally humorless.”

Humans suffer from Stockholm Syndrome vis-à-vis zealots, because they’ve been taught and brainwashed in school and through media to slavishly capitulate to “ideals,” which are too often manias.

Combine that with the pernicious truism “life sucks” (yeah, I gotta bone to pick with Buddha over “all life is suffering,” although I highly recommend Billy Collins’ poem, “Shoveling Snow with the Buddha”) and you can understand comedy’s essential because it stands up to Fuddian pessimism and cracks “Whatta maroon.” 

Comedy is not only part of our history, it’s part of our spiritual heritage. Imagine the patriarchs’ roars of laughter when the author of Genesis started his routine with Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt (Brilliant!  Worthy of Alan King.), continued with Lot’s older daughter liquoring him into the sack.  And then, ba-da-boom! the second daughter does it, too!  Samson and the temple?  Bonk! Bawdy and slapstick material like that brought down the caravanserai.  St. Matthew’s quip about a camel getting through the eye of a needle easier than a rich man into heaven still slays ‘e at glitzy synods.

To paraphrase Prospero, “We are such stuff as jokes are made of.”

That’s it…Gotta go…Be sure to tip your server…

Oh, wait!…I just realized cottage cheese is not a cheese.  That’s just occurred to me.